Summary: Focus Group Report:
Architectural Patterns in Practice
Paris Avgeriou Uwe Zdun
Department of Mathematics and Computing Science Department of Information Systems
University of Groningen Vienna University of Economics and BA
Groningen, the Netherlands Vienna, Austria
paris@cs.rug.nl zdun@acm.org
1 Introduction
Architectural patterns were one of the very few points, where consensus was achieved in the
field of software architecture: their significance is well-established and they are essential to an
architecture description. Architectural patterns are widely accepted as recurring solutions that
solve problems at the architectural design level, and provide a common vocabulary in order to
facilitate communication. Architectural patterns also provide the means to reason for the quality
attributes of a software system and help to document the design decisions taken by the architect.
Regrettably, describing, finding, and applying architectural patterns in practice still remains
largely ad-hoc and idiosyncratic. Those involved in software architecting often face a number
of questions that raise strong debates and cause further problems:
· Are architectural patterns nothing more than raw design solutions? A big part of the lit-
erature treats architectural patterns (also know as architectural styles) as design templates
without having a context, a specific problem to solve or even a rationale. They may not